Gorilla in their midst

It was The Selectors on the phone. They wanted to know if I still had contact with Freek Saunders, owner of the Ventersklip Private Zoo. Readers might recall the name – he owns Smiler, the semi-tame, 400kg gorilla that he trained to play rugby.
When I say “semi-tame”, I mean the gorilla’s discipline during games was about on a [...]

Secrets of the Staff Room

One of the most dangerous things a schoolteacher can do is ask pupils to write what they think of their teacher.
 ”My teacher is fat and screams all day,” wrote one child.
“Miss Smith is nice but not very bright,” wrote another.
An insightful view came from Glen Shaw of Rosebank Primary when he was in Std 1. [...]

Taxiing to a dead stop

TOGETHERNESS Amadeus Tshabalala jinks his Toyota mini-bus taxi (with BMW hubcaps) through the rush-hour traffic.
He is a confident man of high spirits, as evidenced by the stickers on his rear window: “God loves Taxi Drivers” and “Defeat Constipation – Travel by Taxi”.
On the front of his taxi, above a dent which, ominously, is in the [...]

Wartime and Sex Problems

I was (to use that unfortunate expression) ‘brought up’ in London but, as soon as the Germans began their timeous campaign to create much needed public open space in our particularly crowded borough, the Clarke family was transferred to the quiet little village of Streetly some twenty kilometres north of Birmingham.
My father, who was involved [...]